


New

by muusan



Category: ELEX (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Feelings, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 16:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muusan/pseuds/muusan
Summary: Pain is new.





	New

Pain is new.

  
Jax was sure he experienced it before. He used to believe he could endure it, all of it, no matter what they throw at him. He used to believe there was no pain in the World to stop him.

  
And by Calaan he was wrong. A stray projectile hitting his pristine white and blue alb armour and leaving a bruise on his shoulder cannot even get into the vicinity of being mauled by a Moloch. Or hit by a Mountain Troll. Or scratched so deeply by a Skex that its talon brakes and lodges itself in the wound.

  
It doesn't come close to being laid down on the table in the tower of Origin, cleaned and sown together. Duras's hands are trembling lightly when his fingertips touch elevated skin of wound's edges and pain flares, strikes like lightning through his back, stomach and sides, settles on the back of his neck, banging on his skull from the inside. Jax clenches his teeth against the nausea, blinks away the tears welling in the corners of his eyes and does his best to hold bitter noises inside. In front of him Ray, tasked with distracting him during the operation, rambles, turns pale and hastily leaves the room.

  
Fear is new.

  
He remembers standing in the middle of the gallery on top of the shiny grey walls of the Ice Palace, surrounded by blue shields, that were buzzing lightly under the falling snow. Looking at the world from inside of his armour, from behind those shields or behind thick black metal of the raider, under protection of Xacor wherever he went he felt no fear. Fear made no sense to him.

  
Now drops of sweat are forming on his temples while him, Ray and Caja trudge up the barren hills to a new elex deposit. He tightens his grip on the handle of his two-handed sword and wills himself to calm down, but he is still acutely aware of the chill between his shoulder blades, of the little hairs standing up on his arms and legs. Of the eyes in the hills following his every movement. In a few steps Caja will be overcome by influence of the elex, she will trip over a stray rock and fall, and stumble straight to the nest of mutant bugs, that will flail their ugly limbs and bare sharp teeth at her unconscious body. Jax and Ray will kill them chaotically striking left and right until there's not a single one of them left standing. And then he will rush to her still laying on the ground, and fear will flood him like a cold wave from head to toe in the few minutes it'll take to find her pulse. Carrying her blacked out back to Origin he will keep silent and listen to her steady breathing with a strange swollen feeling under his ribs.

  
Compassion is also new, and so is sorrow.

  
The berserker exile standing in front of him keeps his head high and his hands on the pommel of the sword, but Jax can't be fooled. Deep wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and mouth can't mask his young age, the armour - if furry patched vest and trousers can be called an armour - envelops his sickeningly frail body. He is skin and bones. He is starved.

  
He asks Jax to buy supplies for him and a group of similarly ashy skinned people in Goliet, since they are forbidden from entering the city. He swears to pay for whatever food will be brought to them, but Jax knows that's a lie - they don't look like they have a single shard. After him and Caja have left them with no promises outside the walls and the whole way up the mountain she walks silently and keeps looking over her shoulder with sad eyes. At the trader's Jax silently lays all the elexit not meant for armour upgrades on the counter, loads the cart with loaves of bread, dried meat, apples and energy drinks and together they drag it out of the city gates under curious glances of other berserkers. They leave it behind the hill in the direct view of the exiles and return to Goliet without looking back. Compassion feels rewarding on its own.

  
Sorrow is a different story, Jax thinks, forcing a rusty shovel into dry sand under unrelenting Tavar sun. Beside him Bill's body lies wrapped in white linen. Cold and unmoving. Bill didn't have to die. The only thing Bill ever did wrong was make friends with Jax, who happened to cross one too many lines in the land of the outlaws. Bill was harmless, Bill was easy. Bill got killed for Jax's rash decisions.

  
He let Ray go back to Origin and dug Bill's grave himself until the damaged wood of the shovel's shaft rubbed his hands raw. He placed the body inside, covered it and put a makeshift wooden tombstone over it without taking a single brake. Work made his thoughts go quiet, blood on his palms and fingers made it easier. It was the first time he welcomed pain like an old friend.

  
At a distance a group outlaws led by Blake drank beer. Blake himself watched him condescendingly from his beat-up lounge chair. Jax didn't look back, he had done enough damage as it is.

  
Rage is more familiar than he would have thought.

  
Hakon stands on the side step, deliberately one head taller than Jax. His arms are folded over his impressive paladin chest and he speaks of honor and unity, eyes watching Jax closely out of small cut outs in the crow helmet. He wants to know the location of the alb separatist camp to send them an envoy.

  
Jax is not very well versed in reading people, but he doesn't have to turn to Duras to know what Hakon is really planning. And it makes his blood boil like meat soup over burning coals. Mild annoyance he used to feel when Kallax's blatant flattery turned slightly suspicious cannot compare.

Thankfully, he is better at lying than at spotting lies. He relaxes his jaw and lets his fists unclench and tells Hakon that the separatists hide to the north of Goliet. He hopes it will give the former albs enough time to change location and him and Duras enough time to leave the city.

  
Jax settles into rage somewhat naturally. Some people even say it suits him.

  
The lowlife cowers on his seat when Jax towers over him. His buddies don't look so tough now either, in fact the whole bar has gone quiet, watching him in charged silence. And Jax imagines himself cutting into lowlife's belly, ripping him apart, splattering blood everywhere. Keeping him alive long enough to realize that making lewd comments about Caja's mouth and "rack" was his fatal mistake.

  
After the three of them leave the bar – the idiot is more trouble than he's worse – Jax thanks his glowing red and black regent armor for putting lowlife in his place without unnecessary waste of ammo. Ray tells him that if the look Jax had when he stood up between Caja and the offender was directed at him he would have shat his pants.

  
Possessiveness is new.

  
It takes him a while to come to terms with attachment to things. It takes more time to understand that he has preferences, tastes. Ray still teases him about the way his face screwed up when he put the first spoon of Nasty's cooking in his mouth. Something was terribly wrong with it, and it was both unpleasant and confusing – he never disliked food before. To Nasty's credit, she didn't get offended, just took the bowl out of his hands and gave him some dried meat instead, saying that it was his loss.

  
Attachment to people is more complicated.

  
When Ray lifts the last five contracts for his life from Walter's body and throws them into the nearest fire, Jax catches himself taking a deep, absolving breath. It's done, they will not get ambushed in the middle of the road again. Ray is saying something to him with a cheerful intonation, but Jax doesn't listen, trying to make sense of the relief he feels over eliminating danger to Ray's life.

  
And all those other things. He believes Duras when he tells his sordid story of being forced into killing Askor. He keeps judicator Ulbricht in the line of sight during the offensive. He smiles proudly when Nasty climbs on the fallen mech and stomps it into the ground with her small scantily clad leg. All of them are their own people, but him falling out of the sky has gathered them here. Has somehow made them more.

  
Desire is also very new.

  
"Close your eyes", - Caja told him one afternoon in an unsteady voice. He had just returned from his latest trip to the converter not unscarred, but alive. He was filthy and drained, and her chest was rising and falling too quickly and something seemed not quite right, but he did as she told without batting an eye. And while he was thinking how a former alb was even capable of this level of trust she came close to him, cupped his jaw with her warm palms and put her lips on his.

  
He had seen kissing many times before and after, but looking at it didn't do it a single bit of justice. Caja's lips were chapped and feverishly hot, her sleek and nimble tongue coaxed his mouth open and got inside and Jax was lost in more ways than one. Her spell of bravery didn't last long and before he knew it she took a step back, hiding flushed cheeks in long hair and stammering something indistinct, and that's when he let his body take the reins, pinned her right there against the front door and slotted their mouths back together, effectively shutting her up.

  
He didn't have a clue what he was doing, but it didn't mean he wouldn't want to learn.

  
And what a glorious learning experience it was.

  
He learned that her skin is soft, a lot softer than his. That he enjoyed her weight on him the same way she enjoyed his weight on her. That he was allowed to kiss other parts of her body and it would make her gasp and wreathe. That she smelled like violet flowers growing in front of the tower, tasted like lava ashes and fresh snow. That her moans could make him dizzy, that her smiles could make his heartbeat echo somewhere below the belt. That she held the greatest of gifts and was willing to give it to him, time after time, locking her ankles behind his hips and her hands on his shoulders, when he was buried inside her scorching, wet and welcoming core to the hilt.

  
Sex is addictive. Jax thinks that only his honed alb willpower prevents him from holding Caja hostage in the tower for the foreseeable future. He also feels kind of sorry for the albs.

  
Temptations of his beginning seem like a distant dream now. For those first few months soaked in misery, broken, tired and desperate, lost on the road somewhere between Edan and Ignadon, huddled over campfire in a forgotten ruin, laying hungry and awake he wished for elex. Wished for its cold comfort, its assuredness, wished for its power most of all. He thought that power would help him crush his betrayers, reach for the truth and not be afraid. But all the places, where he could get any refined elex were so far away they might as well be on the other planet. Some of the people traded elex potions, but he did not have nearly enough shards. And when it came to spending all the little he had food and armor took priority. This way he at least wouldn't die.

  
Now he is grateful for the blow to the head that let him spend the worst of the withdrawal in a murky haze and allowed all of it to leave his body. He is happy with all the pain, all the fear, all the rage, all the sorrow, all the bruises, broken nails, split dry lips, all the violent, agonized nights, all the words and actions that lead him here, where he is looking outside the makeshift window of the tower on to the rising sun. And he will never go back to looking at the world from the inside of a glider.

  
Caja stirs in her sleep, turns on her stomach and blindly paws his part of the bed. Jax reasons that it is indeed too early to get up.


End file.
